Rediscovering the Past: Connecting Korean War Veterans and Families with Treasured, Historic Photos

Nov 10, 2014

Picture of General MacArthur among 150 pristine photos scanned by Kodak Alaris for online gallery

Kodak Alaris, working with the Democrat & Chronicle, a Gannett newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., is helping to reunite Korean War veterans and their families with more than 150 recently discovered historical photographs. The 8" x 10" glossy, black and white photographs, found by the daughter of a veteran, were taken by the Department of Defense in June, July and August of 1950. The photos were given to Betty Perkins-Carpenter, a Korean War veteran and member of the Monroe County Chapter of the Korean War Veterans Association with the hopes of tracking down the subjects.

"The pictures are amazing," says Perkins-Carpenter. "These aren't simply snapshots; these are treasures. The minute you look at them you realize there are so many stories and family members behind each picture. I knew I needed to do whatever I could to make these photos available to the service people or their families."

A number of veterans and relatives have already claimed some of the photos, and Perkins-Carpenter notes that every connection just motivates her further. Most recently, she was able to verify one of the soldiers in a photo of U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur after hearing from the soldier's son. A high-quality copy of the photo will now become part of the family's treasured memories of the veteran.

"Partnering with Kodak Alaris made this project possible and helped move the timeline along much more quickly," said Annette Meade, Multimedia Manager, Democrat & Chronicle. "If we had to scan each of these images individually with our flatbed scanner, it would have taken a very long time. I'm not even sure we could have committed to that amount of time. The clarity of the images scanned by the Picture Saver PS50 was much greater than we could have imagined and is essential to helping viewers identify the people and places in the photos."

The Picture Saver PS50's ability to scan the front and back of each photograph in one pass expedited the scanning process and made it easy to keep the digital images together with their captions. The KODAK Gentle Photo Separation Module protected each image as it passed through the scanner, while built-in Optical Character Recognition converted the critical identifying information in each caption into searchable text, allowing veterans and their families to search through the names online.

"This scanner was designed solely to scan photos," said Bruce Holroyd, Worldwide Product Manager for Photo Scanning Products, Kodak Alaris. "KODAK Perfect Touch Technology was especially important for this project because it added luster to parts of images that were faded. We're proud to be a part of this important project and look forward to more family members discovering their loved ones through these images."

More than 10 subjects in the photographs already have been identified, and Perkins-Carpenter is following up on a number of other inquiries and strong leads. To watch a video with more information about Snapshots from the Korean War, please visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjsNVN0rx3k.

About Kodak Alaris' Document Imaging Division

Kodak Alaris' Document Imaging solutions enable customers to capture and consolidate data from digital and paper sources, understand and extract valuable insight from the contents, and deliver the right information to the right people at the right time. Our offerings include award-winning scanners, capture and information management software, an expanding range of professional services and industry-leading service and support. With customers ranging from small offices to global operations, Kodak Alaris delivers superior systems and solutions to automate business processes, enhance customer interactions and enable better business decisions.

The Kodak trademark and trade dress are used under license from Eastman Kodak Company.

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